“Maybe,” the man says, and maybe he’s right. The man is in a limp green jacket, which he tablecloths over a barstool before unwinding at length a very long skinny scarf from his scruffy neck. This, and the quick careless order from the list of fancy local beers, does a job of presenting him, to no real audience but the barman, as basically a nice guy. He is not any nice guy. This is Reynard, trying a new tack. Prowling, holing up, stalking and leaping upon them—these are activities pushed to the back burner. He’s grown a beard, stopped drinking—the barman starts the tap—got himself colored contact lenses and a job at a progressive preschool. He’s cool now. They say if you meet someone again under different circumstances, they might as well be a different person. Clean up a man and he is marriage material, and then of course marriage is, further, a civilizing influence. Reynard is counting on people believing all this. He chose this bar for a reason, and he takes a sip.

“What do you think?” Martin asks. “It’s the new winter wheat.”

“I’m tasting a little apple in it,” Reynard says.

“You’re the second person to say that,” Martin says.

“And here I was trying to be original.”

“I think it’s just the honey, hitting the same place on the palate.”

Reynard takes another sip. “I want to think about the palate all day. Let’s trade jobs.”

“Let’s trade debt,” Martin says, retreating a little.

“Hey, I know,” Reynard says. “Let’s both of us trade our problems with any two guys in Senegal.”

“Amen to that,” Martin says, and that bone thrown, Reynard quicksteps over to the jukebox. Jazz of the futurist variety, it offers silently, from 1979. A song that what’s-her-name loved in high school. And there in the glass, the reflection like a photo framed by the doorway, is what he came here for.

“Hey, Rachel,” Martin says.

Rachel Nickels, wife and mother, slopes into the bar saying hello. Reynard chooses a number and gets back to his seat. She comes here, there’s nothing wrong with that, during a slice of unsupervised time Monday Wednesday Friday, when the babysitter collects Nicky from the Kitsune School and Rachel’s flexible workplace lets the radar lag. She could take over the snacks and the flashcards while the sitter keeps the laundry at bay, and she could sit in her makeshift home office, picking at electronic correspondence like rows of wooden ducks. She could run. She likes a gin and tonic, though. Martin’s already mixing it up using a trick with a mortar and pestle that makes the drink taste, just a little, like rolling around in the woods. She sips and says, without looking at the man two stools over, “Well, this is awkward.”

“I’m glad you said something first,” Reynard says. “Do you—?”